It probably wouldn't have worked if someone had decided to remake Carl Sagan's "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage" series too much earlier than 34 years after the show made history on PBS with its focus on "billions upon billions of stars." That's because it made that much of an impact on popular culture - rather like a massive asteroid slamming into the Earth as the planet was forming after the Big Bang.

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But the time is clearly right both to revisit the series and to give it the sheen that only contemporary film and graphic techniques can supply.

"Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" will premiere Sunday across 10 U.S. networks: Fox, National Geographic, FX, FXX, FXM, Fox Sports 1 and 2, Nat Geo Wild, Nat Geo Mundo and Fox Life. After the premiere, the remaining 12 episodes will continue Sundays on Fox and Mondays, with additional footage and behind-the-scenes content, on the National Geographic Channel.

All of this is not just a PR stunt to puff up an unworthy show. At least the first episode of the new "Cosmos" is terrific. And if the other 12 episodes are as good, the series will serve as a valuable continuation of Sagan's legacy.

Sagan, who died in 1996, was an astronomer and astrophysicist who was a respected, legitimate scientist, but also understood how to communicate the excitement of scientific knowledge and discovery to mass audiences through his books, including "Cosmos," which accompanied the 13-episode TV show "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage." He was such an everyman that he was a frequent guest on "The Tonight Show" during the Johnny Carson era.

The new series is hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson who, of course, brings his own personality to the story of how the universe was formed, how the laws of nature evolved and both humankind's place in the grand scheme of things and our insatiable hunger for learning and discovery of our origins.

Tyson achieves what Sagan did, though: making science fun and interesting even for people who wouldn't know an igneous rock from a composite, but without either talking down to his audience or making them think they're being held against their will in a postgraduate physics lecture.

Sunday's premiere, "Standing Up in the Milky Way," not only tackles the not-inconsequential topic of how the universe was created, but traces the evolution of humankind's knowledge about the Earth's place in that universe.

With the aid of sophisticated CGI effects, the episode lives up to its title as Tyson stands on a computerized expanse while the universe is created around him. We go along for the ride as he walks us through a cosmic calendar - taking the entire history of the universe and mapping it out as if its component parts were dates on an annual calendar.

Think we're so important? Life itself would not appear until the final seconds of cosmic New Year's Eve on the calendar, and man would make his appearance as the New Year's baby to end all New Year's babies, in the final second.

That may put things into some perspective because we're not unaware of the basic nature of the universe, even if we can't wrap our little minds around it. But imagine how our ancestors reacted when they first began looking up at the sky and seeing the sun in the day, the stars and moon at night.

Animated segments take us back to the age of Copernicus, and then to monk Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake for his passionate belief in Copernicus' finding that the Earth and planets revolve around the sun and that, in fact, the universe is incalculably immense.

If the new "Cosmos" is faithful to the spirit of the original, it's not only because of producer Seth MacFarlane's commitment to the project, but also because of the participation of Sagan's widow, Ann Druyan, who, with Steven Soter, is one of the series' writers and is also an executive producer of the series.

What better era than our own, as we explore new worlds of technology, to take the journey through the "Cosmos" again?